Anyway, yes, totally got my Le Creuset the … er … mustachian way … ahem …
Well, funny you mention this: you know, isn’t the latest fad private equity? As a curious potential private investor in Le Creuset I thought I had to test their products first before looking into buying shares from Cliden BV.
Makes sense, no?
Narrator: “Goofy bought his Le Creuset more than 10 years ago when still employed at the ad funded money printing machine company. His excuse then: he needed it for baking his own bread. He remembers buying it in Globus Zurich’s main branch on Bahnhofstrasse (for the non locals: Bahnhofstrasse is in a shady Zurich suburb and Globus is one of the kitchenware discounters according to the way Goofy recounts this story). It turned out after a few months that his Le Creuset actually was a little too small for baking bread according to the recipes he was following then (and Goofy then bought – at least via a Coop discount program – a right sized Zwilling dutch oven).”
To anyone interested in slow cooking (e.g., in a cast iron dutch oven) I can recommend pressure cooking instead: much faster and I have got much better results (as moisture cannot escape). You can get a Duromatic from Kuhn Rikon (Swiss made), and you can score them for less than 100 CHF when they do an offer or by visiting their Outlet stores.
We have a pressure cooker as well, but I can’t imagine most of my slow cooking meat recipes working with a pressure cooker?
The (slow) braising process does take hours, whether it’s the lamb mentioned above or the minced meat in a ragù, but it develops taste that you can’t achieve otherwise?
I think the only meat we (well, my wife, as I don’t like the dish much) do in a pressure cooker is Siedfleisch (stewing meat? Not sure what the correct translation is …).
With electric high pressure appliance, you often have a slow cooking mode and a timer.
I set my ribs to cooks for 4-5 hours in the morning to be ready on Sunday lunch.
You don’t need to be around to give it a turns every 30 minutes.
I think it’s possible to get well-braised meat in a pressure cooker - my dad does a piece, dunno the name of the cut, but it’s beef and has a thick layer of gelatine running down the middle which if not braised is hard like a car tire, yet comes out meltingly good - though I don’t have one because I am paranoid it’ll stick and/or explode.
Otherwise I agree on the taste, it comes from reduction which a pressure cooker can’t do by design.
Two chefy tricks told to me by a chef:
pre-salting meat 6-12-24 hours from cooking does wonders
a paste of crushed chicken stock cube with garlic, thyme and olive oil makes an INSANE crust on roast lamb
I highly recommend anyone wanting to enjoy looking at cooking to check Heston’s Fantastic Feasts on youtube - they’re a bit old and no longer all available in full, but they’re worth it.
I ate a slow-cooked goat dish on the beach in Serifos last summer. It was the absolute dogs danglies. Pity you don’t find that here. I expect the meat can be hunted down but I never cooked goat myself before if memory serves. Lots of bbq ribs and pulled pork though. Fully agree, the Weber kettle is fantastic.
I’m sure a butcher wherever you live can get more or less anything other than truly unusual meats within a week, mine does. Plus you’d be able to readily find mutton and maybe goat in Turkish/Arabic shops.
Now I’m actually hungry for mutton in a tajine…
And yeah the Kettle…never embarrassed me over 10+ years.
Taste is always going to be slightly different depending on the cooking method, that’s for sure.
However you can still achieve reduction in a pressure cooker: pressure cook your meat (most pieces will be done in 20 to 40 minutes), then take the meat out and set aside, and reduce your sauce in the (open) pressure cooker.
I just yesterday prepared my favorite Ragù (recipe by by Ms. Hazan) and I just cannot imagine it the pressure cooker way, even with reducing “the sauce” in the open pressure cooker at the end … but maybe it’s just a matter of not having tried it out.
Doing it the traditional way you can definitely better annoy tease your neighbors for much longer (I let my own Ragù simmer for at least four hours) as the delicious Ragù smell emanating from your uncovered Le Creuset cheap Ikea dutch oven spreads from your kitchen to the neighbours’ and random people’s noses passing by in the street* …
*
This is actually regularly a thing for me when I bicycle through my neighborhood and occasionally pick up the scent of some (I’m guessing) braised meat dish that smells just devishly delicious … cue to then my Kopfkino (mental cinema) starting and me wondering how many hours – even days maybe – earlier the person started the dish, what meat it might be and what area of the world the dish might originally stem from.
Now, with your pressure cooker thought poison in my head you’ll have popped that bubble of my Kopfkino forever and the next time I smell something “obviously simmered”-delicious I’ll wonder if they just put everything into their Instant Pot 22 minutes ago and took off the lid 2 minutes ago, letting some scented steam evaporate out of their kitchen that I’m smelling passing by in the street now …
Good tip, I’ve been eyeing the pasta attachment for our Kitchen Aid for a while now…
When talking about a proper cocktail, I’ve always been partial to the Americano (again, the cocktail, not the coffee). That’s why you’ll always find frozen orange slices in our freezer.
Sigh… do we need to open a separate alcoholics thread now?
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